Sentiment Can't Measure This Broken Market

All my career, the sentiment indicators have worked. When you get anything near minus 10 on the oscillator, you have to be silly not to buy. When you get anything approximating 35% bulls on the Investors Intelligence survey, you have to buy.

We have almost double that negative on the oscillator and half as many bulls as that pathetic number.

Sentiment has become meaningless. It is incredible.

If we are going into a severe recession, some of the selling makes sense, but not all of it. As we pull back to 8500 on the Dow, we will be looking at stocks that are yielding 6% to 7% that are solid and can't be shaken. We will be finding stocks at prices that we will look back and think it was impossible to believe.

And then there will be another cohort where we will buy and then watch them go down again, because business is so soft.

I want to reiterate that the stock market for now is just plain broken. You can't have Occidental Petroleum (OXY - commentary - Cramer's Take) down 15% like it is nothing. The company should be losing money with that kind of decline. Remember when I said on Monday that you can't have Exxon Mobil (XOM - commentary - Cramer's Take) go up 10 because it can go down 10 just as easily?

Well, here we go.

The market is just plain irrational.

That said, it is time more than ever to pick those stocks that make no sense down here, keeping in mind that there is no way interest rates are headed up and people will need good yields.

Here's Kinder Morgan Partners (KMP - commentary - Cramer's Take) again at 8%. Philip Morris (PM - commentary - Cramer's Take), the faster grower of the tobaccos, yielding 5%! Halliburton (HAL - commentary - Cramer's Take) at six times earnings. McDonald's (MCD - commentary - Cramer's Take) with a decent yield giving up everything it has made during this great period of earnings.

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